“They want you, not me! You’re Boalt Hall, I’m night school. You’re still down in CIC on the radar, I’m still the poor frigging pilot, and pilots are a dime a dozen. You’re fighter-director, and they know it.”

It was impossible to tell if he was serious. “Bernie,” Mitch said uncertainly, “if bullshit were music, you’d be a brass band.”

Bernie stared at him blandly. “The firm can’t fly on one wing.”

“’One wing,’ ‘fighter director’? You can do better than that!” The figures of speech spelled rehearsal. Bernie had not been caught off balance this morning, not at all. “There’s no problem, Bernie. Make Hal a senior partner. Maybe I’m Boalt, but he’s Harvard. He knows case-law better than I do. And he’s smarter. Hell, I said you can leave my name on the letterhead.”

“That wouldn’t be nice,” Bernie pointed out piously. “Knowing Western wants you."

“Anybody can retain a firm and lose one of its partners! It’s a normal risk!”

“They already suspect it.”

Mitch stiffened. “Who told them?”

“They know.” Bernie swung his chair around, tapping his teeth with the wing of his plane. “They would stipulate no changes in management for two years. Barring death, disease, acts of God, you know.”

“I asked you, Bernie, who told them?”

Bernie swung back, smiling happily. “Me.”

“Yeah!” Mitch felt his cheeks go hot with anger. “Because you’re so goddamn ethical? Well, you screwed yourself. Because I’ve got the boat, and we’re going.”

“Do you know what Western paid those idiots last year? A twenty-five grand retainer and 140,000 clams! You could buy the Queen Mary in two years.”

Mitch’s hands were sweaty. “No way,” he said hoarsely.

Bernie ignored him. “Hell, if you can’t wait to go to Tahiti, I’ll buy you a month down there now. Out of my own pocket.”

“Sorry.”

“You can’t just shove," growled Bernie, “and let this place go down the drain. You got to think of Kitty, and Hal, and me, and the juniors.” His face grew sad and his voice dropped. “I’ve got a kid to put through college.”

“So have I. We’re leaving.”

“My old man’s worse, Mitch. We’re talking about a sanitarium.”

“I’m sorry he is. He’s also living with you in Pacific Towers, in a $100,000 apartment.”

“With a yearly nut of twelve thousand bucks!”

“Sell out and move,” suggested Mitch. "We are.”

“I’m asking for two more years,” Bernie said. “That’s all. OK?”

“No.”

Bernie began to land his airplane, over and over, on his blotter. He shook his head. “A long time, to blow it up like this.”

“Like what? You’re my best friend, we’re not for Christ’s sake married “